Chapter 54: Bragging Brought Disaster (Please Collect, Please Recommend)

"What? The Zhu family's Son of Heaven borrowed twenty thousand Manchu troops, and—and he's even going to have the Crown Prince marry the daughter of the Manchu Prince Regent—what's-his-name? Is this really true?"

At the Diaoyutai traveling palace, the Roving King Li Zicheng was woken in the middle of the night by his adopted son Li Shuangxi. Right there in his bedchamber, still in his sleeping clothes, he summoned Tang Tong, Wang Chengyun, Bai Guang'en, and Du Zhizhi, along with Chief Military Strategist Song Xiance and Second Military Strategist Gu Junen, who had rushed over after hearing the news, and listened to their report on the "false statements" made from the tower of Guangning Gate.

Zhu Cilang really had nerve, and he'd spun the tale with such convincing detail that he'd actually managed to fool Li Zicheng.

Originally Li Zicheng had assumed the reinforcements were just Wu Sangui's thirty or forty thousand Guanning Army troops. Even in open battle, he was confident of victory. Yesterday part of Liu Fangliang's veteran camp troops had also arrived, so he now had over sixty thousand veteran camp troops in hand—enough to defeat Wu Sangui's thirty or forty thousand Guanning Army troops. At the Battle of Shanhai Pass in history, the situation had been much the same. If the Manchu troops hadn't suddenly charged out, Wu Sangui's little bit of capital would certainly have been wiped out at Shanhai Pass.

But now there were suddenly twenty thousand more Manchu troops... If this was true, it would still be quite a headache.

"You lot haven't been fooled by someone, have you?" Li Zicheng looked at Tang Tong, Wang Chengyun, Bai Guang'en, and Du Zhizhi before him, frowning as he asked again.

"Your Majesty, this matter is better believed than not!" Du Zhizhi was the one most familiar with conditions inside Beijing, so he was the one to report. "The Zhu traitor is at death's door now... what wouldn't he dare do? As the saying goes, a cornered rabbit will bite, a cornered dog will jump the wall—how much more so an emperor?"

This fellow really could spin things in his own head. On the way back to Diaoyutai, he'd already worked it all out for himself. He figured the Chongzhen Emperor was at the end of his rope, and borrowing troops from the Manchus was something he could certainly bring himself to do. Even ceding territory, paying indemnities, and making a marriage alliance would be better than losing the dynasty!

Anyway, if he, Du Zhizhi, were the emperor, never mind ceding territory, paying indemnities, and making a marriage alliance—he wouldn't hesitate even to acknowledge the Manchu emperor as his father... The job of emperor was one you could rise to but never step down from; you just had to grit your teeth and carry it through to the end!

Otherwise the whole family would die, every last one!

"Xiance, Junen, what do you two think?" Li Zicheng asked his two military strategists.

Song Xiance liked to put on mystical airs, and was already counting on his fingers. Gu Junen was more practical and spoke right up: "Your Majesty, if you and the Zhu family's emperor switched places, would you be willing to borrow Manchu troops? Would you be willing to marry Dorgon's daughter?"

Li Zicheng answered without a moment's thought: "Of course I'd borrow them! If I didn't, I'd be dead and done for... As for marrying the man's daughter, that's even less of a question!"

Gu Junen nodded. "In that case, we'd better believe it to be true."

Song Xiance had finished his calculations and said to Li Zicheng: "Your Majesty, our Shun dynasty does indeed have this Manchu hurdle to get past... The imperial aura of the realm today lies either in Guanzhong or in Liaodong. Though Your Majesty has seized the initiative, Liaodong is not to be underestimated. If we cannot hold our first-mover advantage, I fear this excellent situation will all flow away eastward with the river!"

Li Zicheng stroked his great beard, his single eye narrowing. "Chief Strategist, you mean that if the Manchus beat us into Beijing, our Shun will come out the loser?"

Song Xiance nodded.

"Then we can't let them get there first!" Li Zicheng's face darkened. "We came all this long way from Guanzhong to the capital—it wasn't easy. No matter what, we have to fight our way in and drag the Zhu family's emperor off the golden throne!"

In truth, Li Zicheng didn't attach that much importance to Beijing itself. He and his followers were a bit behind the times in their thinking, still stuck in the Han-Tang era notion that whoever held Guanzhong held the realm, and they hadn't realized that Guanzhong's land was exhausted and could no longer support a great army to sweep the empire.

But the "mountains of gold and silver" inside Beijing were exactly what Li Zicheng wanted. Because the Shun regime, in order to win the people's hearts, had put forward the political slogan "no levies for three years." This made it very difficult for the Shun regime to extract enough grain and pay from its existing base areas to support its ever-growing army.

So in Li Zicheng's eyes, Beijing, the Ming capital, was more than anything a treasure bowl brimming with gold, silver, and jewels. As long as he could take it, he could scrape out a fat haul of gold and silver, and his army wouldn't have to worry about food and pay for years to come.

"Summon Suotianyao!" Li Zicheng had already made his decision—the battle for Beijing had to be accelerated.

"Suotianyao" Tian Jianxiu was quickly called to Li Zicheng's bedchamber.

"Suotianyao, how are the preparations coming along?" Li Zicheng asked his great general. "When can we assault the city?"

Tian Jianxiu replied: "Your Majesty, we've built a good many scaling ladders, but we haven't made the other equipment yet, and the great cannons haven't been brought up. We only have some crouching-tiger cannons and firelocks."

"We can't delay any longer!" Li Zicheng said. "There are rumors that the Zhu traitor has borrowed troops from the Manchu Tartars... We must move faster and seize Beijing before the Manchu troops arrive! We can't let the mountains of gold and silver inside Beijing be carted off by the Manchus."

"This subject obeys the decree!" Tian Jianxiu asked further, "May I ask Your Majesty, which camps should I command to attack Beijing?"

Li Zicheng pointed at the four surrendered generals before him and said: "These four Regional Commanders here are all at your disposal. Add Liu Xiyao's vanguard camp and Li Guo's rear camp—is that enough?"

"Enough!" Tian Jianxiu patted his chest. "Rest assured, Your Majesty, I'll take Beijing within ten days!"

"Good!" Li Zicheng laughed heartily. "I'll be right here at Diaoyutai waiting for the good news!"

...

Zhu Cilang never imagined that his bragging would bring disaster—these days there was no securities commission to rein him in, but there was still Li Zicheng!

He'd been having such a fine time bragging that he'd even turned Dorgon's six-year-old daughter, Princess Dong'e, into his own wife. In the end Dorgon didn't come after him for it, but Li Zicheng chose to believe it was true.

In the early hours of the nineteenth, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, great columns of Shun troops split into three routes and began deploying outside the southern, northern, and western walls of Beijing.

The force assigned to attack the northern wall of Beijing's inner city was Tang Tong's eight thousand men. They were not the main assault but a feint, and they also detached a portion of cavalry to keep watch on the western side of Beijing.

Wang Cheng'en and Bai Guang'en were respectively assigned to attack the western side of Beijing's inner city and the western side of Beijing's outer city, with the two forces totaling ten thousand men.

And Chen Yongfu was the very general who had defended Kaifeng and shot out Li Zicheng's left eye! Yet Li Zicheng truly had the magnanimity to tolerate others—he still gave such a man important duties! So Chen Yongfu was deeply grateful and genuinely willing to risk his life for Li Zicheng.

Today he commanded ten thousand men, attacking the southern face of Beijing's outer city—this was also the main assault direction. Tian Jianxiu, with more than twenty thousand men under Li Guo and Liu Xiyao, deployed between You'an Gate and Yongding Gate, serving as battle supervisors and reserves. To give Chen Yongfu a chance to win merit in the first battle, Li Zicheng also ordered Tian Jianxiu to transfer a company of "child soldiers"—elite troops made up of youths who followed the Roving King—for Chen Yongfu's use. Because youths were nimble and light, they were extremely useful in wall-scaling combat!

At the hour of dawn on the nineteenth, more than thirty thousand men formed battle lines on the southern side of Beijing!

These thirty thousand-plus men were all elite troops. Li Zicheng's veteran camp soldiers all wore uniform white felt hats and blue surcoats, their ranks orderly, each bearing blade or spear—a truly imposing sight!

Chen Yongfu's men were mainly surrendered Ming troops, but their uniforms and colors were the same as Li Zicheng's veteran camp soldiers: white felt hats on their heads and blue battle robes on their bodies.

By this time Zhu Cilang had also moved to the tower of Yongding Gate. With him were only one firelock bureau and part of his Eastern Palace guard battalion, plus the hundred-odd troops originally stationed at Yongding Gate—fewer than a thousand men in all, hardly worth mentioning.

Beijing's outer city certainly couldn't be held, and there was no need to hold it. According to the plan drawn up by Wu Xiang and Li Ruolian, the outer city was to be abandoned, and the limited forces should all be concentrated in the inner city, the imperial city, and the Forbidden City, or used to escort Zhu Cilang and his father in flight.

"Let's go!" Zhu Cilang patted the battlements of Yongding Gate and said with a smile to Wang Qi, Luo Xiushen, and Wang Yong, who flanked him, "Pull back to Zhengyang Gate. Take the gate-guard troops here at Yongding Gate with you too... Oh, and leave all the banners behind."

Wang Qi was now Zhu Cilang's lead guard. The former lead guard Zhu Chunjie had been sent to the Capital Camps as a Battalion Commander—there were some capable elite fighters in the Capital Camps too, so Zhu Cilang had Zhu Chunchen and Li Guozhen reorganize them, then added some newly recruited braves, forming left, center, and right camps. The left camp went to Zhu Chunjie, the right camp to Li Ruolian, and the center camp to Zhu Guoyong, a Capital Camps officer from a noble family.

At the same time Zhu Chunjie left, Zhu Cilang's Eastern Palace guards were also reorganized and expanded, absorbing large numbers of sons of the nobility into a guard battalion of about a thousand men, placed under the command of Wang Qi and Luo Xiushen.

And Wang Zhou, who came from the Valiant Guard Camp, was promoted by Zhu Cilang to serve as Company Commander of a newly formed firelock bureau. This firelock bureau was made up of men from the Capital Camps and newly recruited braves who knew how to use firelocks. The firelocks they used were the inferior products issued to the Capital Camps, but they could still scare the roving bandits a bit and keep up appearances.

(End of Chapter)